An unemployed office drone leaves the cubicle life behind to study the pastry arts.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Cakes 2: Electric Boogaloo

Well, here we are, in the middle of our second cake unit, which is just crazy, if you ask me. For those of you who were paying attention, I had a bit of trouble with my first cake unit. I found decorating very hard to do, and it was really frustrating. Well, I have to say that this unit is much more relaxed, and I think I really am improving. So that's cool. Well, here we go.

First up, we have the lemon chiffon cake. This cake is a very light American cake. We layered it with a lemon curd filling and covered it with vanilla buttercream. On the sides, we did piped a basket weave decoration. Now, mine looks a little odd, but it's not my fault, I swear. We were supposed to use a special tip designed for making a basket weave, but there turned out to only be 4 of them, so we just used a regular star tip. That's why it looks a little bigger than you would think. Still, I got complimented on my work, which was a huuuuge confidence builder.

Next we have the Fraisier, which is basically a fancy French strawberry shortcake. We used a milk sponge that we filled with fresh strawberries and vanilla mousseline (aka German buttercream) and topped with a thin layer of pale green marzipan. I don't have a picture of it, but it was pretty good! You'll just have to trust me on this one.

The last cake I have today is a white cake filled with peach mousseline and covered with marzipan. First off, the cake itself is absolutely awesome. This is Chef Cynthia's personal recipe, and I know I'll be making it in the future. Also, as much as I love peach, I felt the mousseline detracted from the flavor of the cake. Maybe a thin layer of vanilla would've complemented it more. Nonetheless, it was delicious. And with the marzipan covering the cake, it was really good. I feel like this has been my favorite cake so far! Oh, and it's a little boring looking, I know. We ran out of time, so we didn't get to decorate the cake. Oh well.

That's it for actual product. We were lucky in that last class, Chef Cynthia gave us a bonus fondant lesson. Our curriculum only provides one class for that, and it's really not enough. So, I think we were all grateful to Chef Cynthia for that. We practiced on styrofoam cake dummies, so I didn't bother with a picture. Tonight's class, though, we'll be doing more fondant, which we're putting on a chocolate roulade, which should be interesting!